Grooms with cold feet? Make that cold hearts

When one of the Indian brides profiled on “Runaway Grooms,” airing tonight on Discovery Times Channel, first met her intended husband, she was overjoyed. He was even more handsome than the pictures he had sent from Canada as the two families discussed her dowry and other conditions of the arranged marriage.

“I thought, ‘I must have been a very good person in my previous life,’ ” she says.

Joy quickly turned to despair. She and her family were betrayed by scammers taking advantage of the ancient custom of a bride’s family paying a dowry to the groom’s family.

For families in India, the prospect of a daughter marrying a man who has moved to a country where opportunities are greater is especially tantalizing. Families take loans and sell property to accumulate a big enough dowry to seal the deal.

“Runaway Grooms,” a well-done documentary by Toronto-based filmmaker Ali Kazimi for the Canadian Broadcasting Corp., is a startling inside look at this fraud. Thousands of women and their families continue to be victimized, despite a law in India banning dowry demands.

There is law and then there is custom, and in this case, the latter is stronger for the Muslim and Christian families, as well as traditional Hindu families, who pay dowries.

The scheme is appallingly simple: His family agrees to a price of cash and gold, then demands even more money on the wedding day, in one case $50,000.

After the honeymoon, the groom returns to his home abroad and months later files for divorce. His family keeps the money, he has gotten what one deserted bride delicately calls “physical pleasure,” and the bride and her family are humiliated and broke.

“Runaway Grooms” chronicles two cases using home movies shot at elaborate Hindu wedding ceremonies. Then, in Canada, the filmmakers track down the grooms, whose explanations seem lame.

“Runaway Grooms” suggests that even among educated classes, a divorced woman in India suffers a stigma, making remarriage all but impossible.

“So in every aspect the wife is the loser,” says an Indian politician, who estimates there are 10,000 forsaken brides in Punjab. Some are left with children.

The legal systems of both countries are ill-equipped to help these women. Canada allows no-fault divorce and cannot sort out conflicting evidence that is half a world away. In India, the courts are already jammed.

As a Canadian attorney of Indian descent says, “These scoundrels know they can get away with it.”

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‘Runaway Grooms’

Where: Discovery Times Channel

When: Today at 8 p.m.

Rating: TV-PG (parental guidance suggested)